I have learnt from bitter experience that when the armchair theorists and the Whitehall generals start talking of a surgical war, it is time to run for cover.

-Ashdown, Baron
  Referring to plans for the Gulf  War. In the Sunday Times, 27  Jan.

   The body of Benjamin Franklin, printer, (Like the cover of an old book, Its contents worn out, And stripped of its lettering and gilding) Lies here, food for worms! Yet the work itself shall not be lost, For it will, as he believed, appear once more In a new And more beautiful edition, Corrected and amended By its Author!

-Franklin, Benjamin
  Proposed epitaph for himself.

   Sempre que os homens sabidos lhe diziam palavras dif|¤ceis, ele sa|¤a logrado. Sobressaltava-se escutando-as. Evidentemente so¤   serviam para encobrir ladroeiras. Mas eram bonitas. Whenever men with book learning used big words in dealing with him, he came out the loser. It startled him just to hear those words.Obviously they were just a cover for robbery. But they sounded nice.

-Ramos, Graciliano
  Vidas secas (translated as Barren Lives,1965),'Contas'.

Cover your assöthe bureaucrat's method of protecting his posterior from posterity.

-Safire,William
  Safire's Political Dictionary, introduction.

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me workö I am the grass; I cover all.

-Sandburg, Carl
  Cornhuskers,'Grass'.

   I will endeavour to put the word sex in capital letters on the cover of every issue of the Literary Review under my editorship, regardless of its actual contents† My purpose is simply to embolden booksellers.

-Waugh, Auberon Alexander
  In the DailyTelegraph, 9 May.